


An Angel Who Did Not So Much Fall As Trip

by SeaOfBones



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Absolute fluff, Angel Crowley (Good Omens), Demon Aziraphale (Good Omens), M/M, Well I think it's funny, does one even need to tag aziraphale/crowley, dunking on aleister crowley for 500 words, ineffable boyfriends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-07-29
Packaged: 2020-07-25 18:09:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20030113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeaOfBones/pseuds/SeaOfBones
Summary: They called him The Demon Aziraphale, Father of War, because of the incident with the flaming sword. Crowley knew better.---Some lighthearted Demon Aziraphale and Angel Crowley sketches, from after Eden to now.





	An Angel Who Did Not So Much Fall As Trip

They called him The Demon Aziraphale, Father of War, because of the incident with the flaming sword. Crowley knew better.

"What did you think they'd use it for?" Crowley asked, exasperated.

Aziraphale ran his fingers through the red dirt of the wasteland, pale face shaded from the sun by vast, black wings. "They looked cold," he explained. "It gets so cold here, at night."

"And it didn't occur to you that a sword might have any, shall we say, secondary purposes?" Crowley replied.

"Are angels supposed to have such a low opinion of humans?" Aziraphale said sniffily.

"Maybe I'd have been better as a demon," Crowley shrugged.

Millenia later, Aziraphale would defend the inciting incident of the Trojan War as "probably a big accident".

\---

They called him The Angel Crowley, Gardener of Eden, because of the incident with the apple. Aziraphale knew better.

"You were going to eat it yourself, weren't you?" Aziraphale said. "That's why you told her not to touch it."

"I wanted to see what all the fuss was about," Crowley muttered. "I can't believe God made them curious. Worms aren't curious, we've never had to cast worms out."

The garden was decaying now, no matter how much Crowley yelled at it. Aziraphale touched one of the golden-brown leaves with his square fingers. "I think it's quite nice like this, actually. Doesn't it get awfully dull, living in spring all year around?"

Crowley shook the branch above his head, scattering autumn leaves over his sharp white wings, and laughed. "I didn't think demons were supposed to enjoy God's creations, and all that," Crowley said.

"Yes, well," Aziraphale shrugged. "Neither are angels."

Crowley would laugh like that again every time the humans surprised him by uncovering something strange that seemed unrelated to the ineffable plan. Penicillin. Gravity. Velcro.

\---

Aziraphale was almost promoted back to Hell, after what happened with Aleister Crowley.

"And another thing, why does he have the same name as me?" Crowley demanded. The shutters of Aziraphale's shop were drawn shut, and the demon had made a pot of tea.

"Well, that's the thing," Aziraphale explained, fingers fussing with the floral pattern along the rim of his china cup. "I thought it _was_ you. _Aleister Crowley_. I thought it was one of those funny disguises of yours. He walked right in and said, _A.Z. Fell, as in the demon Aziraphale?_ And I thought, that would be strange for a mortal to say, so I just said yes."

Crowley sat cross-legged in Aziraphale's nice armchair. "Honestly, I'm flattered that you would lend me the occult books if I asked. Aren't they supposed to be the devil's secrets, or something?"

"Are angels supposed to bring rare Bibles they find on holiday back to their demon friends?" Aziraphale said.

Crowley shrugged, voice squeaking with guilt. "I mean, you were there for most of it. It barely counts as a secret."

Aleister was trying to summon the Antichrist. Or at least, the mother of the Antichrist. Aleister was _always_ trying to summon the mother of the Antichrist. Three days after the angel and the demon met in the bookstore, Aleister's nearest ritual to success was interrupted when a tile on his roof burst during a heavy London rain, and his house flooded.

Aziraphale's promotion was quietly forgotten.

\---

People had always drawn Crowley as beautiful and feminine. An Angel of Fertility, long red curls flowing over the shoulders of his white toga. He held a snake as his symbol; sometimes suggestively, depending on the artist.

"Oh, come on!" Crowley yelled, in the middle of the British Museum. Aziraphale shushed him. Crowley lowered his voice and hissed, "I haven't worn one of these since 500AD."

"Yes, well, it still looks quite like you," Aziraphale shrugged.

They drew Aziraphale with an ibis head, and burning coals for eyes. _He is as Thoth, Moloch and Prometheus, bearing the fiery knowledge of pleasure and pain to humanity_ were, Crowley liked to remind him, Aleister's words.

"It's in the area of looking like me, I'll give you that," Crowley replied.

"Besides, it's rather pretty," Aziraphale added. Crowley had stopped asking whether demons were supposed to find things _pretty_, as much as Aziraphale had stopped asking whether angels were supposed to swear.

Aziraphale had tried to paint Crowley himself once. He'd tried a lot of things before he opened the bookstore, and that decade he had decided to become an artist.

"I suppose it's a good thing there are a lot of human artists in Hell," Aziraphale had muttered as he stood back to observe his amateurish handiwork. The painting still hung in Crowley's flat, although he'd reframed it a few times over the centuries. It was a good reminder to the plants to behave themselves, when Crowley was out.

\---

Like the incidents with Aleister Crowley and the flaming sword, most of Aziraphale’s greatest triumphs for Hell stemmed from things that had initially seemed like a good idea. He was responsible for single-use plastic bags, greeting cards and corporations at Pride, and had invented gentrification several times across several continents and centuries.

Crowley had tried to explain this to Heaven while asking to be redeployed, during that year in the middle of the 14th century when they’d fallen out over The Black Death. The Demon Aziraphale is impossible to thwart, because he has no idea what he is doing. Aziraphale’s argument, conversely, was that The Angel Crowley was impossible to thwart because he did not care about humans. They both knew they were wrong, as they said it.

Crowley did like humans. He just liked them exactly as much as he liked everything else in creation, and found it rather dull to care for only a single species. That his great efforts to create an Eden on earth were beneficial to humans was, again, an accident. He was responsible for green belts, community beach cleans and vegan sausage rolls, and had invented wildlife conservation areas several times across several continents and centuries.

Aziraphale and Crowley had fallen out over The Black Death because they’d both said it was ineffable, while wishing the other would argue them out of excusing so much suffering.

\---

Crowley told Heaven that he was renting the flat above Aziraphale's shop to keep an eye on the man who, and he couldn't emphasise this enough, inflicted Aleister Crowley upon the world. Aziraphale told Hell that he was depleting Heaven's resources by charging Crowley rent. Both sides seemed to think that the arrangement was in their favour.

"That can't be me," Aziraphale said, squirming against Crowley's lumpy sofa as he watched the television from behind his fingers. The demon on the screen was absolutely shredded, half-naked body and bird-taloned hands slick with sweat and fake blood.

"The wings are right," Crowley suggested.

He tried to offer Aziraphale popcorn, but the demon had covered his eyes completely as his video counterpart tore a man's head off at a truck stop.

Crowley always howled with laughter at the bloody parts, and grabbed at Aziraphale's shoulder. "Humans are so _clever_," he said, pausing the tape. "Look at that prosthetic!"

Aziraphale always did, cracking an opening between his fingers. The grainy colours of Crowley’s television washed over the mottled, red rubber stump. "That's disgusting, Crowley. I left Hell so I wouldn't have to see things like that anymore, you know."

"I didn't know Hell had a special effects department," Crowley replied.

As the opening credits ended, the agent from the FBI's Demonic Activities department turned in awe. An oily blonde angel swaggered across the screen towards her, burdened with dozens of golden snakes.

"Oh my goodness, Crowley." It was Aziraphale's turn to laugh. Crowley's mouth hung open. "Why are you blonde?"

\--- 

Aziraphale didn't tell Hell that he had, in fact, also moved into the flat above his shop. And Crowley figured that what Hell didn't know couldn't hurt Heaven. They made a basic attempt to re-arrange things if they were expecting divine or demonic company. Aziraphale had once stammeringly claimed to be luring Crowley to the side of Hell with some sort of demonic seduction, and Ba'al had laughed so hard he’d forgotten to ask any follow-up questions.

Crowley wished they had a real garden, but in London that was unlikely. He began to hide succulents that he couldn’t fit in the flat around Aziraphale’s shop, insisting that they were, in fact, God's own dehumidifier and were very good for keeping the damp away from the books.

Aziraphale did not, in turn, fill Crowley's flat with clutter on purpose, as any kind of direct retort. He just did. Occult diagrams and notes for his online book group littering all of Crowley's neat surfaces, any gaps in the shelves quickly filling with books Aziraphale wanted to keep for himself.

The cynical angel and the gentle demon, their lives entwined, as they could only be on earth.


End file.
